Sentimental Value (2025)
Directed by Joachim Trier
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.
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17 films that influenced Sentimental Value
What critics say influenced Sentimental Value
“Sentimental Value” is more realistic and nuanced than the glossy “Jay Kelly” (2025) or primal pre-Raphaelite “Hamnet” (2025) while somehow being more optimistic.
A treacly character study of a movie star facing up to his status as an absent father due to spending most of his daughters’ lives on a film set (Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly) feels of a piece with a more tragic tale of art and family like Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet…
Along with “Sentimental Value” (2025) and “Hamnet” (2025), “Jay Kelly” tries to cultivate a film about a father wanting to retain his status as a priority…
Baumbach’s latest is made even worse if and when you finally watch Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which not only handles the film industry and being actor better than Jay Kelly, but also in handling the dysfunctional relationship between a man and his two adult daughters, who he mostly ignored to focus on his career.
Recent films, from last year’s A Different Man to this year’s Sentimental Value and Is This Thing On?, have all pondered similar questions.
There are times when you can see this fitting easier into an foreign/arthouse vibe (and, from what I’ve heard, this year’s Sentimental Value is that movie, although I have yet to see it)…
…some overt references to Ingmar Bergman – especially when the faces of the father and his two daughters morph into each other at one point…
…she suffers from crippling bouts of stage fright (just like the heroine of Bergman’s Persona)…
…comical, ominous classical music cues that most audiences will recognize from The Shining…
…the portentous opening notes of The Shining’s main title theme…
…carries a thematic kinship with his earlier works (especially Oslo, August 31st and The Worst Person in the World)…
Director Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy—comprising Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011), and The Worst Person in the World (2021)—is a body of work that explores a beautiful city no one seems able to leave.
…onun önceki işleriyle (özellikle Oslo, August 31st ve The Worst Person in the World) tematik bir akrabalık taşısa da…
…the film falls short of the greatness achieved in The Worst Person in the World or Oslo 31st August, which covered similar ground with more emotional depth.
…as well as with his frequent collaborator, co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt (Thelma, Oslo, August 31st)…
…but the film falls short of the greatness achieved in The Worst Person in the World or Oslo 31st August…
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In Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978), an unhappy tale of three sisters contending with their parents’ divorce, Mary Beth Hurt confronts anguished Geraldine Paige, a mother all-consumed with her abandonment. “I feel like we’re in a dream together.”
There are shades of Autumn Sonata (1978) or Cries & Whispers (1972), films where imperious, overbearing parents or formidable family estates slowly crush the families living in them.
It’s Sentimental Value‘s second reference to Haneke after a gaping crack in the drywall––a replica of the Caché poster gash that so astutely communicated the depraved voyeurism at the heart of Haneke’s media-incisive masterpiece––backdropping the title card.
Although Sentimental Value includes various nods to Bergman’s cinema, I kept thinking of Wild Strawberries throughout—only later did I realize that Victor Sjöström’s character was also named Borg, when I took a brief look at the film’s Wikipedia page. Curiously, the page also explained the meaning of the film’s original Swedish title, Smultronstället. Idiomatically, the wild strawberry patch signifies a hidden gem—a place of personal or sentimental value, often little known, it read. Pure coincidence? Direct reference? Either way, I had found yet another IKEA stool in the film.
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DVDs of The Piano Teacher and Irréversible…
…the hilarious choice for Gustav to give his eight-year-old grandson Irreversible and The Piano Teacher as birthday gifts proves an even trade.
…inappropriately gifting his young grandson DVDs of The Piano Teacher and Irreversible…
I can’t help but give Trier extra points for the only time I’ve ever seen “The Piano Teacher” used as a comedic punchline—and a damn good one, at that!
He’s as capable of gifting his grandson DVDs of Irreversible and The Piano Teacher as a “birthday gift” as he is of weeping over his daughters’ pain.
…he gifts Agnes’ nine-year-old son Erik two comically inappropriate DVDs for his birthday: Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible and Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher…
Gustav is also the shameless brand of Royal Tenenbaum that comes back when he suddenly has a brilliant, selfish idea.